But then he removes my touch, turns, and walks away.
My heart seems to curl. I can’t quite reach him in this world, this ship, his place. And I don’t know whether he has moved, or I have.
* * *
XXI.
Niko wasn’t the only one to board Ash’s ship. Macedon insisted on being part of the raid, since the weapons Ash was trading for were Hub tech and Hub stolen. Niko got Ash and the jets took Falcone. The pirate is on Macedon.
Both ships are injured, the carrier more than the striv. Ash shot Niko’s ship in the attack but it’s exterior damage only. Yet Macedon invites Turundrlar to dock at Chaos Station for repairs and resupply. It’s a long leap back to Aaian-na space.
Niko, on the bridge, agrees. I sit by the bulkhead, in shock.
“I didn’t shoot any of his jets,” Niko says, as if that explains it. “Maybe he trusts me now.”
“Or maybe it’s a trap,” I have to admit.
“I will risk it,” Niko says. He doesn’t smile. It will be a long time, I think, before he smiles again.
I try not to feel extraneous. But there’s nothing for me to do and Niko seems to think I’m all right just to sit.
Turundrlar docks alongside Macedon, at Chaos Station, with two battleships and three striviirc-na marauders hanging offside in space, watching. Not quite trusting. They aren’t injured enough to require docking and they all rather keep their eyes on one another. Just in case.
I can imagine the conversation between Captain Azarcon and the Chaos stationmaster. Niko says a few brief words to confirm his good intentions. I doubt anybody really believes him.
“What’re they going to do with Falcone?”
Niko glances at me. He turns to his comm. “Macedon, there is a crewman aboard my ship. He inquires after your prisoner.”
There’s a brief pause. Then Azarcon himself answers. “He will be transferred to station authorities, to be extradited to Earth for trial.”
I rise and go to the comm. “Sir, may I be in the escort party? In the transfer?”
“No you may not.”
“Sir, I—”
“Captain S’tlian, I want to assure you that this is a safe station for you to make your repairs. If you are in need of supplies, simply comm Macedon and we will arrange for the materials to be sent, under guard, to your ship. This is in appreciation for your help in apprehending Falcone and stopping that contraband shipment. As soon as you’re equipped and spaceworthy, you may peacefully depart from Hub territory and return to your planet.”
Thank you and please leave.
“Acknowledged,” Niko says. “And appreciated.”
I wonder if he understands the nuance.
I leave the bridge.
“Jos-na—”
I slam the hatch shut behind me. Falcone escaped a Hub prison before. Genghis Khan may be dead but there are others in his fleet. I’m sure he has allies in the Hub, all the way up in the governments. He was a carrier captain. He thinks he was wronged by his superiors. He thinks he is right to do what he does, because it’s war. He probably thinks he will get away with it.
Captain Azarcon should kill him. I don’t know how he can have the pirate in his brig and not kill him. Not after he spent time with the man, however long ago that was.
I go to Niko’s quarters, where he’s letting me stay. I look for weapons.
The hatch opens behind me.
“Jos-na, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to escort Falcone.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I’ve earned it.”
He turns me around. “You can’t do that. It might make it worse.”
He means the war.
I stare into his face. “Falcone got me on his ship. And I couldn’t do anything.” My voice breaks, a betrayal.
The silence lasts a breath. He knows what I mean. But he’s adamant. “If you kill him, then what? EarthHub says you took their rightful prisoner. You, a traitor. A symp. You took the law out of their hands and put it into your own. This isn’t their way.”
“It’s my way. It’s my right!”
“It’s out of our hands.”
“You put me on that ship, Niko. I was three years on that ship and then I got caught again by him. If you’d kept me—”
I can’t finish it. I can’t even really blame him. Because I betrayed him too.
I try to sit. Or walk out. But he doesn’t let me. He holds my arms. It’s him and I know it but I see the captain and Erret, Aki and Nathan and Evan following me around the deck.
Kris, dead and gone.
I pull from his hold. “I have to just see them, Niko.”
“They will kill you.”
I look into his face. I say with no animosity, just as a matter of fact, “My life’s been in danger before, with them.”
And I got out of it. Without you.
Maybe the thought passes between us. His jaw clenches and he goes to his cabinet and retrieves a striviirc-na designed laser-pulse rifle. It’s lighter than the standard LP-150. He tosses it to me. It’s his own rifle. I see the battle scars beneath the polished black casing.
He pulls one of his own blades from a forearm sheath and slides it into the side of the rifle stock, where there’s a designed place. One quick movement away from where your finger rests on the trigger.
“Go to your jets,” he says. “But remind them you are mine.”
He would kill them, now, if they hurt me.
“Niko,” I tell him, “I’m not yours.”
He takes a step toward me, words snared in his throat. I see the thoughts trapped behind his eyes.
It’s a tangled silence I can unravel if I stay.
But I open the hatch without looking back.
* * *
XXII.
Niko doesn’t follow me through his ship’s corridors. I don’t expect him to. A feeling creeps into my heart like smoke under a door—I don’t want him to.
* * *
XXIII.
As I step from Turundrlar’s ramp I see the dock boards, high above near the maintenance gantries, over the doors leading to the inner station and the concourse. Caliban is here, just arrived from insystem. Beside their name says resupply. Already?
Insystem carriers, Dorr would say, with a smirk. I guess he’s right.
By a great show of trust, or perhaps the complete opposite, Macedon docked beside the Warboy’s ship. There are two jets guarding the carrier’s ramp and airlock, armed to the nines. They recognize me and scowl.
“What d’you want, strit-lover?”
“Nothing.” I stop at the bottom of the ramp to wait.
“Get lost, Musey.”
“I’m not doing anything. I won’t do anything.”
“You got a weapon. We don’t want symps with weapons near our lock. So move it.” The jet, Pyper, levels his rifle at me.
I back away. But shadows appear behind the jets. A group of them. One with bright blond hair.
“Well well,” Erret Dorr says. He strides down the ramp, in jet uni and his weapons. Behind him come more jets: Hartman. Madi. Dumas. Sanchez.
Falcone in the midst of them, cuffed and bruised.
Captain Azarcon, last, with a gun in his hand.
“Come to bury Caesar?” Dorr asks me.
All of them notice my rifle.
“This isn’t wise of you,” Azarcon says.
I feel Falcone’s eyes on me. I’m not in jet uniform. My clothes are sympathizer clothes, alien clothes, coiled white with hidden knives.
“Are you going to shoot me?” I ask Azarcon.
“Not yet,” he says. “Right now I’m busy.”
“Hey,” Madi says. “There’s some of Caliban. A day late and a donut short, as usual. We coulda used them at Meridia.”
Station Marines are already on their way around the dock-ring from the inner offices, come to take the pirate off everybody’s hands. I see them in my periphery, a wall of blue uniforms.
The Macedon jets stand around Falcone in a guarded circle. He can’t run and his hands are tied. They lead him down the ramp.
But I see his smile. I see his eyes go over my shoulder, toward the incoming Caliban crew.
I turn, rifle up.
“Musey!”
One of the Caliban jets already has a gun in his hand, half-hidden behind his leg. I shoot him first.
The others scatter and return fire.
“Get down!” somebody yells behind me.
I dodge behind the ramp. The dock lights up with laser streamers.
Erret shoves Falcone’s face in the deck, half kneeling on his back. “Insystem bastards!”
It looks like Caliban’s entire jet complement has swarmed the deck. The station Marines take up positions behind us. Macedon can’t dispatch jets from the lock, it will put them right in the line of fire.
Turundrlar’s lock flanks the Caliban jets, on their left.
“Give me your wirecomm,” I say to Sanchez, on my right.
Sanchez glares at me. “Why?”
“So I can comm Niko. He’ll help us!”
“Do it,” Erret tells him, as more laser pulses whiz over our heads.
Sanchez hands over the wire. I slip the pickup in my ear and tap the contacts. But not fast enough.
“Incoming!” Hartman shouts.
Singing grenades fly toward us.
“Move move move!” Dorr yells.
I don’t think. I grab Falcone, Erret at his other side, and haul him back. But he fights, kicking though his hands are bound. I hit him with a fist. Dorr tugs the other side.
Captain Azarcon propels all three of us into the station bulkhead with his shoulder as the grenades explode the ramp.
Laser follows the grenades. Going both ways, from their side and ours. It’s a mad light show.
I knock the captain down and land over him, feeling the heat sear over my head.
“Strits!” someone yells.
I didn’t have to comm them. They heard anyway.
I look up, past the debris of the destroyed ramp. Beyond it, on Caliban’s flank, swift bodies descend, firing.
It’s a swarm of white into jet blacks. Decimating them.
The captain nudges me off and pushes himself up, looks over at the aliens. In his eyes are good degrees of caution and disbelief.
Falcone slides himself up the bulkhead, in my periphery.
Before the captain says anything, or moves, and before the jets can stop me, I yank the knife from the sheath on Niko’s rifle. In one move I throw it through the air.
It sings like a lament.
* * *
XXIV
Falcone tries to get up. I’d hit his chest but not fatally. I pull another blade from my forearm sheath and step on his stomach to keep him down. The knife swings down.
He has no idea until the blade sinks through. I miss his heart purposely and get his shoulder. The bone resists but the knife is sharp and not easy to break. Striviirc-na steel. His blood comes out over my fingers as I feel the weapon tip exit his shoulder through the other side. It doesn’t make my grip slide. There are grooves in the hilt. He gasps and struggles, even this injured. Desperation engulfs his eyes, the lines on his face. It makes his cuts and bruises shine. He must feel my weight and see my blade with his blood on it up to the hilt. I stab again into the other shoulder.
The dark centers of his eyes start to expand and freeze.
I’m kneeling in blood on a scuffed deck.
I clamp my free hand over his face, shoving his features into themselves. His skin is hot. The bones of his skull resist.
He says through gritted teeth, “Joslyn.”
Before he speaks again I stab his jugular with Niko’s knife.
There’s a warm flood, and the station is quiet. Space is silent and without a breath. It’s like a birth.
But then there’s nothing.
* * *
XXV
Their eyes are fixed on me. There’s a distance between the jets and myself. I rise to my feet above the body, careful not to slip on the blood. Red streaks snake long patterns up my hands to my wrists. Blood covers unevenly over the tight white coils of my clothing. I wipe the blade on my thigh to clean it.
Aki is there with her medkit, kneeling beside an injured Sanchez. But she isn’t doing anything. She looks up at me, like all of them are looking at me, and there’s something between horror and tenderness there. I don’t know why she would care. Or any of them.
The captain’s eyes don’t move from me.
A crowd has suddenly formed. Citizens and merchants, all forcibly hanging back but looking at the destroyed dockside. Station security gray, Marine blues. Jet blacks with Macedon patches. All the Caliban jets are dead or facedown on the deck, guarded by jets and strivs standing side by side. A squad of strits pushes through the crowd. Some of them wear Earth-Hub governmental pins on their lapels. One of them asks sharply, “Who killed the prisoner?”
Erret says flatly, “Why do you care?”
Azarcon looks away from me and stands beside Dorr, addresses the strit who spoke. “Who are you?”
The captain looks like any jet who has been through a fire-fight. He still holds his gun.
The strit says, as if he’s speaking to just a jet, “Harrison Ventura, Chaos Liaison Officer for EarthHub. Who are you?”
The captain says, “Azarcon.”
Ventura looks twice. But he’s too embarrassed to apologize. His eyes fall on me, my face, my clothing. He blinks a few times. But he’s a professional and he turns to the captain.
“Isn’t he a symp? You realize this act was unlawful? It was murder.”
He actually says that on this dockside, littered by traitors. He says other things, about due process and indictment orders.
I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m not going to stand over that body like I’m paying it respect. I pick up Niko’s rifle and start to walk away. I don’t know where I’m going.
Aki stands and holds my arm, not hard. But she says, “Stay. Wait.”
They talk behind me.
Ventura wants me to stand in the Hub for taking away their due process. He doesn’t know yet what I did on Macedon. I have half a mind to show them what a sympathizer is up close, but I figure they’ve already seen it. He says there are lawyers who have come all the way from Earth to collect the prisoner.
Dorr’s voice rises above Ventura’s, with the authority and arrogance of a soljet of Macedon.
“He ain’t goin’ nowhere with you lot. He belongs to us.”
That stops Ventura cold.
Azarcon says, just as cold, “There is no debate. Your prisoner is dead and so are those traitors who tried to free him.”
“The symp’s alive,” Ventura says.
“His guardian is the Warboy,” the captain says. “Would you like to contest it?”
“I thought we were contesting it already,” the man says dryly. “We’re at war, are we not?”
“You might have noticed,” Captain Azarcon says, “that the Warboy’s ship is currently in dock. So I suggest you talk to Admiral Ashrafi. He’s just appointed Chaos Station as the location of our negotiations.”
This stuns everyone into silence. I don’t know if Azarcon just made that up or if it really has been arranged. I’m acutely aware of meedees with optics vying for a clear view but the Marines and jets aren’t having it. Azarcon pretends not to notice and looks at me.
“Corporal Dorr will take you aboard to clean up. When Captain S’tlian arrives you’ll be remanded into his custody.”
Niko is already on dockside. I see him walking toward us, flanked by three striviirc-na. But he pauses before he gets here. He hears the captain’s words. Nobody recognizes him.
“Sir,” I say. “Captain.”
Azarcon’s eyes look over my shoulder at what’s on the deck. He looks into my face. There might be gratitude there. Or compassion. I’m not sure. It’s not something I am used to seeing.
&
nbsp; Maybe I should apologize, for what that might be worth, but for some reason instead I tell him, “My ship is dead.”
Mukudori. For a long time. Macedon. I don’t deserve her.
Maybe I’m the only one to see it, but the captain’s face relaxes slightly.
“Not both,” he says. “When you’re ready, one will be there.”
* * *
XXVI.
I find myself in medbay with Aki spraying sealant on my wounds. I don’t even remember getting them, but lasers must have brushed me. The crew looks at me but their hostility is muted. Because of the blood on my hands? I don’t know, but jets respect that sort of thing. Maybe the captain said something. Maybe the fact he didn’t shoot me on sight is something. Maybe Niko’s alliance in getting the pirates and the other traitors… I’m too weary to ask about it, as Erret hovers and Aki works in silence.
Evan comes in and straight toward me. I think he’s going to embrace me but he stops and just puts a hand on the examination table beside me, as if he needs the support in order to stand.
“I thought you were lost again on that other ship,” he says. His voice shakes, but not from fear. From memory.
I want to wash the blood from my hands before I touch him. But that might be never and he tried to protect me. He’s always tried to protect me. So I just rest my hand over his, on the table.
* * *
XXVII.
Erret lets me stay in his quarters after my shower. He has to keep an eye on me, he says. For once he makes no innuendo.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask. Forgiving me.
“I got orders,” he says. But he’s lying.
Maybe I’ll never really know. He isn’t predictable.
There are pictures stuck to his bulkheads, of stations he’s visited and crew once or still alive. I look at them all. I recognize a dark blond jet with an Archangel patch. Pictures of Hartman and Nathan, Stavros and Madi. There is a small one of a young man and a woman, both fair-haired. An older picture, frayed at the edges, tacked right above his pillow. He resembles them.
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